Facebook at 250 Million Users: Could it Be Too Big?
Facebook announced today that it now has 250 million users, having added 50 million new users in just the past three months. If Facebook was a country it would now be the 4th most populous place on earth. If it maintains this kind of growth there will be more Facebookers than people living in the United States by early November. The man who ostensibly rules this kingdom is 25 years old.
Could Facebook be too big? It has centralized an incredible amount of power over a huge number of peoples' lives; the texture of Facebook now shapes the pattern of a substantial portion of human communication around the world. Is Facebook too big? That seems like an important question.
Subtle Influences
Let's look at an analogy. Every week about 30 million Americans watch American Idol on television. What are the lessons re-enforced by this program? Perhaps it's that anyone can achieve great things, that harsh public judgment can be funny and appropriate, that the story of our culture is one of rising from obscurity through hard work to wealth and heroism. There may be more subtle messages communicated. It's widely understood that American Idol is an important cultural influence at this point in history.
Facebook is almost 10 times as big and its users spend far more time on the site than people spend watching American Idol. They use it to communicate with some of their closest friends and family. Surely there can be no doubt that the culture of Facebook has an impact on the larger culture of the human experience. The old cliche "the medium is the message" still rings true and Facebook is a very big medium.
That much influence centralized in one technology company, at a time of dramatic cultural change brought about by technology, is cause for serious concern.
What Is Facebook Teaching Us?
Facebook says all the time that it is helping the world become more connected; it acknowledges that it is making a cultural impact. Facebook cannot be trusted, however, to discuss all the different ways it is changing the world. The cultural impacts of Facebook will take a long time to analyze, but two examples are worth looking at.
Peter Thiel and the Singularity
Facebook's first and most important investor is PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. Thiel is a big believer in what's called The Singularity, defined by the Singularity Institute as "the technological creation of smarter-than-human intelligence." Thiel believes that investing in the Singularity means thinking ahead about how humanity can benefit from our relationships with these smarter-than-human machines instead of being hurt by them. He says that the Singularity will either lead to the biggest economic boom in human history or it will lead to an apocalypse. Literally.
So one of Facebook's keystone thinkers has his eyes set on a future where machines are smarter than humans, and that either helps us a lot or destroys us all. He is essential to the vision of a communication technology now used daily by 250 million people.
Facebook's machine intelligence is very real; its system is learning quickly about how humans interact and how different people respond to different events, for example. Let's hope that the very wealthy Thiel, the very young Zuckerberg and the rest of the company's insular brain-trust, can steer that machine towards truly helping humanity and not destroying it.
You Will Be Less Private
Facebook made its mark and appeals to so many people in large part because what you say on Facebook is by default only visible to social connections you have chosen to approve. Already the site was changing our traditional understanding of privacy from one where certain things were said to certain people in certain circumstances - into an experience where all things are said to all people that we know, in a big bucket.
Now, the company is rolling out changes to the way Facebook works that will prod users into making more of their shared information visible to everyone on Facebook, all 250 million other users and an unknown number of robots analyzing your information for the company, perhaps for advertisers and perhaps for people building applications you'll appreciate.
We asked Facebook execs earlier this month when they held a press call about privacy if they were in fact seeking to push users towards communicating more information publicly. Two of the three people on the call said yes, they are. One, the executive in charge of privacy on the site, gave an obtuse answer about how Facebook wants to give users more control over their communication. It doesn't really seem that way.
Facebook is making changes to the public/private balance in a big way that hundreds of millions of people communicate. We may or may not like the results.
These are just two examples of ways that Facebook could be changing the world. It has incredible reach in doing so. Whether that is good or bad is an important question to ask.
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Is just me or RRW has lowered the bar with this kind of articles?
"Let's hope that the very wealthy Thiel, the very young Zuckerberg and the rest of the company's insular brain-trust, can steer that machine towards truly helping humanity and not destroying it."
This sounds more like a bad scifi movie plot, like SkyNet but trying to be trendy...
Honestly, I have enjoyed a lot of what you guys write, but when it comes to twitter, facebook and all the hyped, overrated websites, you are not very professional.
Sorry if I sound harsh, but I really hope you raise the bar again, this is a great site.
AG - the "destroy the world" idea was Thiel's, not mine. He's the one who says the Singularity could do just that.
It is good because you have to consider the world it is replacing.
I began publishing in 1994. It was my determination with my first project that it get *everybody* publishing. I didn't know why I wanted that; it just seemed punk rock I suppose. It's fifteen years later and now "everybody is publishing". I got what I wanted.
The novel Infinite Jest deals with an alternative reality in which "the internet never happened" - in which InterLace Inc. is the monopoly provider of computer media. The innovations of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney with our constitution must be matched by innovations of the people.
Here's hoping Sean has more influence on Mark than Peter where it counts. I believe this to be the case... we live in the "good" universe or else the cuban missile crisis would have wiped humanity out a decade before I was born. It is interesting to consider that these human relationships may have galactic ramifications, as our species is not going to colonize outer space unless we have Facebook along with.
-s
@AG
No, it's not just you. I suppose RRW writers are under tremendous pressure, they have to write even when there's nothing to write about.
Nice article, at least its first half. However, how is Facebook related to singularity, apart from Peter Thiel's interests? Facebook's "machine intelligence", as you called it, is nowhere near strong A.I. (which is the prerequisite of singularity), nor does it heading towards strong A.I. creation: Facebook's engineers are just too busy scaling the system. More so, the bigger system becomes, the harder it gets to change its underlying principles. Thus, don't expect artificial intelligence to originate from Facebook's internals, seek it elsewhere.
Pavlo, you seriously think that one of the biggest examples of capturing human connection and conversation data in the history of the world isn't going to play some part in the formation of artificial intelligence? I suspect it will.
I have no problem with Facebook growing at the rate it is. As a big supporter of shared identities and niche social networks, I'm excited at the prospect of 250 million people out there with a portable identity they can use to sign into sites like mine and this one; posting back details of their activities to the Facebook site.
Facebook will never cater for everyone's needs, especially with regard to business and professional interests, but it is a potentially great portal (for want of a better word) to a truly Social Web.
Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
Marshall, surely, Facebook will play some part in artificial intelligence research, the question is how big is this part. Facebook possesses an enormous amount of data; someday, a lot of human social patterns can be datamined out of it. However, the bigger Facebook gets, the lower gets an average intelligence level of its users and thus the quality of data they generate. The one who analyzes Facebook's data, may extract knowledge about handling human mobs, but will gain little insight into artificial intelligence creation.
Marshall Kirkpatrick is one of the worst editors of RWW. He doesnt know what he writes. RWW should send him out of his job! :angry
Wow, Inet, I haven't gotten one of those comments in a long time! Wonder what it was about this post that made you feel so strongly?
Interesting stuff, Facebook is truly dominating much of the worlds population. We can see the growth, well i can see the growth since each time i search my friends name in facebooks search bar, i find 200 more people with the same name... Facebook is going to be too big for its boots and soon it will be suspending accounts just because there is too much bandwidth being used... hope it doesn't come to this stage but who knows?
In terms of these comments against Marshall... inet especially, seriously if you can do any better, start up your own blog and post the same sort of quality, original content. As a blogger myself, it is pretty hard to find original news nowadays.
Keep up the good work Marshall!
First: I think it's important to reflect on the power of a thing which technically and theoretically connects 250 mio. people.
But what would happen if Facebook stopped existing tomorrow? Would we have so much less social interaction? I don't think so, that's why it's also not so important. We can still connect in many ways.
Still, while I agree with you that centralized power and its inner structures is always questionable I don't really see the bad examples in your text. You asked "too big?", so what's your answer, yes or no?
Singularity guy is rather funny than scary.
One thing I would like to know if there are Facebook-China stories? I could certainly look up many but there is no outstanding story like Yahoo and Google had with revealing private data or selfcensorship. Or?
How is Facebook use in China? Do people there use it to point to injustice? Unfair lawsuits, corruption, poor respect for nature and health? That's a point where Facebook really is forced to take sides.
Plus: Facebook is still growing without really making much money. If one day they decide to milk it things will change too.
If you tried to say we should ask more to answer the "too big" question, I agree. But what exactly?
Or do you fear a giant robot army controlled by the Facebook intelligence which has learned from us all and has taken over the power? Sure, that could be a point, too.. Probably inet has been assimilated already.
That is just absolutly unbelievable to think facebook is as big as that.
I have to be honest, im not the biggest fan of the social networking side of things, but it grows ever more stronger and seemingly important within the field of internet marketing to which im slowly learning, i repeat slowly....
I guess ill have to move with the times, thanks for the article.
I agree with Thomas. If Facebook ceased to exist tomorrow I don't think many lives would be dramatically changed. People would continue to socialize in the same way they always have, but I just wouldn't be able to update all my friends at one time. Facebook is something I think most people do when they have nothing else going on and nowhere else to be.
My Dad wasn't sure if I wanted to add him as a friend on Facebook - he didn't know if I had stuff I didn't want him to see. That's silly. If I have something that is private, or that I'm not okay sharing with a large group of people I wouldn't post it on Facebook.
I love how big facebook is. i love that I can connect with old friends I havn't thought about in years. But if it stopped existing, i'd go back to my life as it was before - just as happy, but with less advertising.
Marshall said...
It has centralized an incredible amount of power over a huge number of peoples' lives;
Exactly. That's what you call the power of non-coercive persuasion, this is contrast to government power of coercive persuasion, ie, they'll come and say, hey private business men out there you must not do this or else (as in anti-trust or something like that).
The market place should be free, with less or no regulations at all. Businesses are allowed to rise and fall on their own (no bail-outs or anti-trust against anyone).
Mark Z, is going in doing exactly that persuasion, since he doesn't come with a gun and force users to join and well-done to him, where the likes of him should be applauded (although I am not a face-book user).
Well it looks like is the last fad. All social sites are now coming with public view profile... I'm not surprice ay all with this move from facebook, even more I saw it coming...
Ignore the haters Marshall! I for one enjoyed your article, and welcome our facebook-powered AI overlords...
Marshall, if you're worried/concerned about the 'Singularity' concept, you'll be TERRIFIED by Ray Kurzweil's "The Age of Spiritual Machines". Another thought-provoking piece on the subject is Bill Joy's article in WIRED magazine titled "Why The Future Doesn't Need Us"
The stable door was opened long ago, the horse has bolted - and we can debate the best solution/way forward... but closing the door is no longer going to be effective :)
Incidentally, what disturbed me most about Kurzweil's book was the concept of a "downloadable consciousness". You wrote about "towards truly helping humanity and not destroying it." - but maybe the bigger question will become "what really IS 'humanity'" !!!
All success
Dr.Mani
Here's a link to Bill Joy's article:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html
Dr.Mani
Marshall, surely, Facebook will play some part in artificial intelligence research, the question is how big is this part. Facebook possesses an enormous amount of data; someday, a lot of human social patterns can be datamined out of it. However, the bigger Facebook gets, the lower gets an average intelligence level of its users and thus the quality of data they generate. The one who analyzes Facebook's data, may extract knowledge about handling human mobs, but will gain little insight into artificial intelligence creation.
Facebook at 250 Million: Could it Be Too Big? http://bit.ly/jYuK1 [from http://twitter.com/marshallk/statuses/2655272397]
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
|
July 16, 2009 12:08 PM
those the only options?
Actually, it looks to me like there are a few articles in one here, and my main criticism would be that it tried to cover too much in one go.
The biggest concern to me is the "Privacy" issue. Legislation designed to protect us and our identities on the Internet is about 30 years out of date. If I wanted, I could find out a whole lot of info about 90% of posters on here - probably a lot more than you think or than what you'd like, and the social networking (nx) phenomenon is 200% behind this.
They know what all this info is worth - or will be worth further down the line. Even on RWW, I'm asked to give my name, e-mail address & URL! Unless we all make this info up every time we post to a blog then we're leaving traces behind us all along the way. If that's "AI" then I think we have some more collective evolving to do still. Certainly, individually, we could do with being a whole lot less naive.
Saturday, July 18, 2009, is LIKE Day. Click on every single "Like" you see on Facebook on July 18 (PDT). If you "Like" enough times, something awesome may happen.
Copy this to your Facebook status (and twitter) so everyone knows. The more Likes the better!
It is not a surprise; with the entire media buzz and all the money behind the website is just something I saw coming long time ago. However, I don’t really see what all the interest from user is… it is just same all…
Gianny Roberts
That bit of information that Facebook's owner is just 25 years old caught my attention.
Moving to other things, the article is a good discussion. more privacy or less privacy, the users know it all and have mad a choice to use Facebook as their communication platform.
Of late i have been noticing a lot of criticism written about the "largeness" about social networking sites and i don't get the point. Its not like the makers are doing something wrong. Its created for the users, grown by the users and will quit if they have problems.
It is not a surprise; with the entire media buzz and all the money behind the website is just something I saw coming long time ago. However, I don’t really see what all the interest from user is… it is just same all…
Gianny Roberts
Actually, it looks to me like there are a few articles in one here, and my main criticism would be that it tried to cover too much in one go.
The biggest concern to me is the "Privacy" issue. Legislation designed to protect us and our identities on the Internet is about 30 years out of date. If I wanted, I could find out a whole lot of info about 90% of posters on here - probably a lot more than you think or than what you'd like, and the social networking (nx) phenomenon is 200% behind this.
They know what all this info is worth - or will be worth further down the line. Even on RWW, I'm asked to give my name, e-mail address & URL! Unless we all make this info up every time we post to a blog then we're leaving traces behind us all along the way. If that's "AI" then I think we have some more collective evolving to do still. Certainly, individually, we could do with being a whole lot less naive.
WOW :D
fuck facebook...in the face